Plan to avert global warming by cooling planet artificially 'could cause climate chaos'

Proposal to inject tiny reflective particles into the upper atmosphere to block out sunlight could lead to droughts, warn scientists

A controversial proposal to cool the planet artificially by injecting tiny reflective particles into the upper atmosphere which block out sunlight would cause droughts and climate chaos in the poorest countries of the world, a study has found.

One of the more serious plans to “geoengineer” the global climate would in effect create another climate catastrophe that would result in misery for millions of people, according to a computer model of the plan.

Some climate researchers have suggested that mimicking the cooling effects of volcanic eruptions with massive injections of sulphate particles into the atmosphere may be necessary in an emergency if global temperatures and carbon dioxide levels continue to rise unabated.

It is known that the sulphate particles produced by volcanoes, which are relatively quickly washed out of the atmosphere, can reduce incoming solar radiation significantly, and so cause average global temperatures to dip.

However, a study by scientists at Reading University has found that the effect of a massive and continuous injection of sulphates into the air would be to alter the rainfall patterns over vast regions of the world, notably Africa, South America and Asia which could as a result be devastated by drought.

“We have shown that one of the leading candidates for geo-engineering could cause a new unintended side-effect over a large part of the planet,” said Andrew Charlton-Perez of the University of Reading, a co-author of the study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

“The risks from this kind of geo-engineering are huge. A reduction in tropical rainfall of 30 per cent would, for example, quickly dry out Indonesia so much that even the wettest years after a man-made intervention would be equal to drought conditions now,” Dr Charlton-Perez said.

“The ecosystems of the tropics are among the most fragile on Earth. We would see changes happening so quickly that there would be little time for people to adapt.

“Discussion of geo-engineering often prompts heated debate, but very often there is a lack of understanding of what putting large amounts of aerosol in the stratosphere will do to the complex climate system. Our findings should help to fill in some of the gaps about one of the leading candidates,” he said.

Volcanoes, such as the Mount Pinatubo eruption in 1991, can cool average global temperatures significantly for short periods, but to reverse the expected 4C rise in global temperatures as a result of global warming would need large quantities of sulphate aerosols to be injected into the upper atmosphere over the course of several years.

“To reduce global temperatures enough to counter effects of global warming would require a massive injection of aerosol – the small particles that reflect sunlight back into space. This would be equivalent to a volcanic eruption five times the size of that of Mount Pinatubo every year,” said Angus Ferraro of Exeter University.

“Previous predictions of how stratospheric aerosol injection would affect climate were based on a number of assumptions. By actually modelling what would happen if aerosol were to be pumped into the atmosphere around the equator, we have revealed a new impact of geo-engineering on tropical climate,” Dr Ferraro said.

“As well as reflecting some of the incoming energy from the sun and cooling surface temperature, the aerosol also absorbs some of the heat energy coming from the surface which warms the stratosphere. We have shown for the first time that warming the stratosphere makes the troposphere below more stable, weakening upward motion and reducing the amount of rainfall at the surface,” he said.

Professor Ellie Highwood of University of Reading, a co-author of the study said that there is an understandable desire to explore alternatives to deep-cuts in carbon dioxide emissions, which do not seem to be materialising as a result of the failure of countries to reach a binding international agreement.

“Climate scientists agree that cutting carbon emissions is still necessary to curb the damaging effects of future climate change. However, since such cuts are far from certain to materialise, proponents of geo-engineering research argue that whatever the world decides on its carbon emissions, it would be prudent to explore alternatives that might help us in the decades ahead,” Professor Highwood said.

“On the evidence of this research, stratospheric aerosol geo-engineering is not providing world leaders with any easy answers to the problem of climate change,” she said.

independent.co.uk

Time travellers do not use Twitter, scientists find.

An experiment to find out whether time travellers might give themselves away on social networks by referring to events which had not happened yet, has failed to find anyone from the future.

ime travellers probably do not exist or, at least, they do not use social networks, a team of scientists has declared.

Researchers predicted that if humans in the future had discovered a way to visit the past they might leave clues on websites like Twitter and Facebook by inadvertently mentioning events which had not yet happened.

Astrophysicist Robert Nemiroff of Michigan Technological University and his team decided to trawl the internet in the hope of ‘teasing out’ time travellers.

They selected search terms relating to two recent phenomena, Pope Francis and Comet ISON, and began looking for references to them before they were known to exist on Google, Bing, Facebook and Twitter.

In the case of Comet ISON, there were no mentions before it burst on the scene in September 2012.

They discovered only one blog post referencing a Pope Francis before Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected head of the Catholic Church on March 16, but it seemed more accidental that prescient.

“In our limited search we turned up nothing,” Nemiroff said. “I didn’t really think we would.

“But I’m still not aware of anyone undertaking a search like this.

“The Internet is essentially a vast database, and I thought that if time travellers were here, their existence would have already come out in some other way, maybe by posting winning lottery numbers before they were selected. “

The project came about following a card game last summer where Prof Nemiroff questioned whether time travellers would use social media and how you might find them.

“We had a whimsical little discussion about this,” said Prof Nemiroff

For their last and perhaps most ingenious effort, the researchers created a post in September 2013 asking readers to email or tweet one of two messages on or before August 2013 - “#ICanChangeThePast2” or “#ICannotChangeThePast2.”

However nobody responded to the query.

Prof Nemiroff, who normally publishes on more arcane subjects, such as gravitational lensing and gamma-ray bursts, says this recent endeavour is not as big a stretch for him as some might think.

“I’m always doing stuff on space and time,” he said, adding, “This has been a lot of fun.”

The team conducted their study on their own, without grant funding.

Their paper “Searching the Internet for Evidence of Time Travelers,” coauthored by Prof Nemiroff and physics graduate student Teresa Wilson, will be presented to the American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington, DC.

FROM TELEGRAPH.CO.UK

UFO News & Sightings 2014: Scientists Determine Mysterious Orbs as Ground Lights during Earthquakes

The truth indeed is out there, and scientists have finally found it: mysterious lights that flash right before an earthquake, long been attributed to UFOs, have been determined to be ground lights, according to The Space Reporter. The ground lights are perfectly natural electrical energy that's in no way alien to this world.  

The study conducted by a team of scientists found that "during an earthquake, the stress of rocks grinding against each other generates electric charges, which travel upwards along the nearly vertical geological faults that are common in rift zones. When the charges reach Earth's surface and interact with the atmosphere, they create a glow," reports the Scientific American.

The study is published in the Seismological Research Letters, January-February issue. Geologist Robert Thériault, lead author of the study, emphasizes that, "Earthquake lights are a real phenomenon-they're not UFOs; they can be scientifically explained," according to the Scientific American.  Thériault's team studied 65 cases of earthquake events that span 400 years, with data from dozens of locations. 

One case studied by the team, for example, detailed that half-hour before the 2008 Sichuan earthquake in China, an amateur video caught 'sparkling rainbow auroras high in the sky over the affected areas,' says Liberty Voice. The phenomenon had been a mystery at the time it happened, as it was highly unlikely for China, which is too close to the border, to get a glimpse of auroras.  

Apart from debunking the UFO myth with this discovery, the study is useful in disaster preparedness. With ground lights as indicators, communities in earthquake prone locations may get the best cautionary advice by taking the cue and preparing an evacuation plan well ahead of time, notes Liberty Voice.

Ground lights however, appear in varied forms. They may appear as floating orbs that seem to come from alien spaceships, or they may look like glowing meteor streaks. The variety of these ground lights may make it difficult to 'read' it as an earthquake indicator, but scientists insist that the spectacle is so startling that people witnessing the flashes would certainly feel the sense of urgency to report sightings.

'Fakes' and woodcuts - Germany's top UFOs

The disruption at Bremen airport on Monday night caused by an unidentified flying object is just the latest in a series of UFO sightings in German skies dating back almost 500 years.

Germany’s most famous UFO sighting occurred back in the 16th century over Nuremberg, Bavaria, and was captured in a woodcut.

The work by printer and publisher Hans Glaser shows a supposed battle between UFOs on April 4th, 1561.

Glaser produced the woodcut and an accompanying description ten days later which is preserved at the Central Library in Zurich, Switzerland. 

It shows and describes objects in the sky at dawn and talks of a “very frightful spectacle” in which Glaser claims the objects “fight one another.”

More recently, a video uploaded to the woodcuts' modern day equivalent, YouTube, shows three UFOs in the night sky over eastern Germany on September 18th last year.

Three UFOs were filmed over Wittenberge, Brandenburg on a camera reportedly using night vision. The video has had more than 200,000 hits, but one UFO expert told the Huffington Post at the time that the video was likely a fake.

A UFO sighting over Greifswald near Rostock, eastern Germany on August 24th 1990 has become known as the Greifswald Lights. Photos were reportedly taken at around 8.30pm of seven shapes in the sky.

Radio station Hessische Rundfunk reported on April 10th last year of a UFO which puzzled German Air Traffic Control (DFS).

The object was shaped like a torso and was spotted flying over the countryside outside Frankfurt.

A spokeswoman for DFS said: "It is an unknown flying object which we can’t identify," the radio station reported.

Area 51 exists and there were strange goings on admit CIA.

The existence of Area 51, the US airbase rumoured to house UFOs, along with details of some of the strange activities that went on there have been officially acknowledged in newly released CIA documents.

Its existence has been a badly kept secret for decades and it has fuelled the imaginations of conspiracy theorists and UFO hunters around the world.

Now the existence of Area 51 has been officially acknowledged by the Central Intelligence Agency and its exact location revealed in Nevada.

Documents released by the CIA also reveal that there really have been some strange occurrences at the secret airbase – however, they are not quite as exciting as UFO hunters would like.

Among the jobs that staff at the site had to perform during the 1960s was a routine of vacuuming the runway to allow experimental aircraft to take off without damaging their engines.

The Telegraph

Earth Size UFO over the North Pole of the Sun Review for Jan 2014, UFO Sighting News.

This Earth size UFO was seen this week hovering over the surface of the sun yet its dark coloring would indicate that its not hot at all. The filters are specially made to show the suns energy and yet...this UFO is so close and not heating up. Makes you wonder about their technology. SCW

UFOs Over Japan On First Week Of 2014, VIDEOs, UFO Sighting News.

These UFOs were caught in the sky over Japan on the first week of 2014. Sure they have a little resemblance to meteors however if you look carefully you will notice that often the objects tail disappears completely giving us a visual of the actual craft. Sometimes alien craft do not need to cloak...they just change the appearance of the UFO to make it look like a natural phenomenon...that not so natural after all. SCW